Heldrakes

[bebe]

As both a chaos player and a nid player I have found that it is almost OP to field heldrakes against nids. These guys are a serious threat and very hard for nids to counter. I suppose a single one would be at least manageable but two or more ... even if you play dual flyrants they are likely to be grounded before the heldrakes are destroyed. using these guys and plasma plaguemarines really seem to hurt the nid lists I've encountered. Not to play devil's advocate here but I do also play nids. How do you stop these guys?

[infornography]

Heldrakes are not anywhere near the most threatening thing in the skies. First off they only get one weapon system. Either they forego any anti air capabilities at all and take the anti-power armor template attack or they take the autocannon and get 4 non twin linked BS3 shots.

Combined with the fact that they don't have a hover mode and therefore cannot pick their targets reliably and I just don't find them all that threatening. Their Vector strike thing isn't even terribly impressive.

just get a flyrant behind it and knock it out of the sky. Alternatively either simply ignore it or take an opportunity to fire anything st 4 or higher at it's back armour. And be glad your chaos opponent didn't bring a storm eagle.

Storm eagles, Storm Ravens, and pretty much everything Necrons, IG, and DE can bring to the table worry me much more.

[coredump]

Remember, despite the fact that it looks like an MC, it is still a vehicle,and the weapon is hull mounted. It only has a 45 degree arc of fire. No flying over a target and shooting 'behind' you.

[lord6christoph]

the heldrake has hover

[commandersasha]

I'm going to have to disagree, Heldrakes are a nightmare for us. That Baleflamer can cover ANYTHING on the board: when the Drake comes on it can zoom 36", then throw the template the remaining 12". Ignoring cover, powerful, and if I remember right once per game gets to re-roll or something, it can completely remove a backfield scoring unit, your Hiveguard, or anything else it fancies. 3 times in 3 games it has killed my Flyrant in one turn, between Vector and Baleflamer.

It is big, ugly, the designer didn't play test the model(wing tips permanently fouled by scenery, and with a twisted neck the gun isn't pointing forward!), and it is spoiling the game for me, as My best gaming buddy has 2, and I don't want to be that gimp that refuses to play against certain units, but I know that even one of them will be ensuring a demoralising crushing defeat.
I hate Fliers.

[Anggul]

Nov 28, 2012 10:33:44 GMT commandersasha said:

I'm going to have to disagree, Heldrakes are a nightmare for us. That Baleflamer can cover ANYTHING on the board: when the Drake comes on it can zoom 36", then throw the template the remaining 12". Ignoring cover, powerful, and if I remember right once per game gets to re-roll or something, it can completely remove a backfield scoring unit, your Hiveguard, or anything else it fancies. 3 times in 3 games it has killed my Flyrant in one turn, between Vector and Baleflamer.

It is big, ugly, the designer didn't play test the model(wing tips permanently fouled by scenery, and with a twisted neck the gun isn't pointing forward!), and it is spoiling the game for me, as My best gaming buddy has 2, and I don't want to be that gimp that refuses to play against certain units, but I know that even one of them will be ensuring a demoralising crushing defeat.
I hate Fliers.

How, pray tell, does it Vector Strike then Baleflamer you? It has to move over you to Vector Strike, which means you're then out of the Baleflamer 45 degree firing arc. The only way it would work is if you failed your Grounding Test against the Vector Strike hits, then the rest of his army finished you off.

With flyer vs flyer combat you need to be more clever than your opponent with timing and manoeuvring, in fact it's best to take the second turn so you can come on after them and shoot them down.

[rampagingfex]

Played against an army with two of them in a tournament last week, and I had 0 Flyrants, and he also had an allied Vendetta. Had no problem knocking them out of the sky. The Baleflamer wasn't even that scary. Maybe it was the types of targets I had, but Tercigons and Trygons don't really fear their templates. My dakkafex rolled a little above average, but coming in from a pod and shooting at rear armor it really made a mess of the thing. I wasn't actually that impressed with what it did before that. Zoomed on, killed a few gaunts... I'm with Infornography, I'm more scared of Storm Ravens...

-Myst

[lordbob]

Nov 28, 2012 10:33:44 GMT commandersasha said:

I'm going to have to disagree, Heldrakes are a nightmare for us. That Baleflamer can cover ANYTHING on the board: when the Drake comes on it can zoom 36", then throw the template the remaining 12". Ignoring cover, powerful, and if I remember right once per game gets to re-roll or something, it can completely remove a backfield scoring unit, your Hiveguard, or anything else it fancies. 3 times in 3 games it has killed my Flyrant in one turn, between Vector and Baleflamer.

It is big, ugly, the designer didn't play test the model(wing tips permanently fouled by scenery, and with a twisted neck the gun isn't pointing forward!), and it is spoiling the game for me, as My best gaming buddy has 2, and I don't want to be that gimp that refuses to play against certain units, but I know that even one of them will be ensuring a demoralising crushing defeat.
I hate Fliers.

At most in can do 1 wound to a MC with a baleflamer, and how does it remove a unit of hiveguard, it can only remove a maximum of 1 hiveguard a turn (even doing 3 wounds). It can remove a unit of termagants if you're clumped up, but losing 1 termagant unit to a flier is not really a problem.

[halos]

Yeah, the Baleflamer is far, far scarier to marine player than it is to nids, where units tend to be smaller, more expensive and rely on their armour to survive. The Baleflamer makes all of that irrelevant and is readily capable of wiping out a Devastator squad a turn (or whatever) scary stuff.

Againt nids it's either gonna kill a few gants (oh noooo) a wound a MC 50% of the time (annoying, but manageable.) The Vector Strike is more dangerous for the MCs, but if you must bring it down then I believe it's only AV10 rear? So even basic gants can have a shot at glancing it out of the sky or, failing that, Flyrants/Hiveguard/Dakkafexes, the usual anti-air junk.

[Jabberwocky]

I'd be most worried about a lucky vector strike (or multiple from double drakes) taking out your flyrant while moving in to double flame your backfield units such as Hiveguard.

It's the same tactic I use with my FMCs :-P

[infornography]

The baleflamer is a powerful anti ground attack, but either it is going to stay zooming which means it will only get one good pass usually on a target before having to pick another one, or it will go into hover (sorry, I remembered incorrectly earlier that they didn't have it) meaning you can crush it with an MC in melee or shoot it with any part of your army able to see it's rear.

Also it can only vector strike when zooming per the meteoric decent rule.

Also also vector striking does not cause grounding tests as it is not a shooting attack.

[Jabberwocky]

Any FMC which suffers a 'hit' takes grounding tests. Vector strike causes hits, unlike perils which causes wounds.

Edit: it does reference shooting attacks! I've had it quoted to me before though, has it been FAQed?

[fragile]

It is shooting attacks.

[gigasnail]

it never actually says vector strike is a shooting attack. there are a lot of problems with how it is resolved. big grey area and needs FAQ.

[fragile]

There really isnt many issues with VS. It isn't a shooting attack, although it counts as one for the purposes of being able to fire in the shooting phase.